Grox/Trivia

This page consists of various trivial facts about the Grox as a species and as an empire.

Trivia

In the creature and tribal stage, a spaceship will occasionally appear and abduct creatures from the player's home planet, more often than not a Grox ship.

Also, a crashed spaceship can sometimes be found during the creature stage, which will remain on your planet throughout the game. If it is a Grox ship, it will have a purple cloud floating from it. It has no effect on the player, however.

It can be assumed that the Grox is a very old empire, considering most games take at least a billion years to reach the space stage.

If you end your alliance with the Grox, they will take it quite personally. They will say that anyone else would love to ally with them, despite being universally hated by all other empires.

The Grox can be dragged and dropped into the creature editor, provided the correct PNG can be found. Clicking on any asymmetric parts instantly turns it symmetric. It also cannot be saved if any asymmetric parts are turned symmetric unless one has a hack.

The cyborg parts are not—contrary to popular belief—clothing from the Space Outfitter, but are instead creature parts. Maxis has made these parts inaccessible to players, although one can still access those using mods.

It is impossible to trade with the Grox. The trade button will always be greyed out, no matter how high one's relationship metre is. However a rare glitch will allow one to trade with them, although they will not have the 'advanced technology' that other empires claim they have.

The Grox offer twice the payment for their missions. For example, an eradication mission usually pays 75,000 Sporebucks, but the Grox will offer 150,000. This may be because, due to their innate hostility, no empire (if any) would help them, so they double their offer for anyone who helps them.

If the Soothing Song ability is used on the Grox, all empires within a certain distance will instantly lose a number of relationship points, usually declaring war.

Allying with the Grox will lower relationship points by 200 for every empire in the entire galaxy to instantly declare war. If one uplifts a planet with a Monolith, they will also instantly declare war once they reach the Space Stage.

The Grox seem to thrive in the radiation produced by the Galactic Core, because their colonies closest to the core have more maxed out buildings and turrets.

Their dependence on radiation may also explain their 'toxicity'.

There exists an extremely rare glitch where the Grox will have a colony on a T1 planet (or higher), which is odd since Grox colonies can only survive on T0 planets. Upon entering the planet, however, the colonies will be instantly destroyed.

Cultural References

If the player manages to ally with the Grox, one can hear their anthem by going near one of their cities. If one waits long enough, the usual static and keening will disappear and one of the Grox will start singing happily in a deep, strangely non-robotic, voice. This has been likened to the poetry of the Vogons from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Grox are believed to be based largely on the Borg from the Star Trek series. In fact their internal name is ‘Grob’, which is ‘Borg’ spelled backwards.

Grob is also the German word for ‘brutal’.

Sometimes, when they declare war they will say “Resistance is futile!”, a famous Borg quote, or “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”, a reference to the Daleks from the Doctor Who series.

The Grox commonly reference human culture when you break an alliance with them, mentioning CDs, lava lamps, and hoodies. Some believe this points to that the Grox are of human origin somehow, although such references are not uncommon in Spore.

The number of star systems the Grox control (at the beginning of the game) is 2400, which is 0042 backwards (42). This suggests that the Grox are the antithesis to Life, and is a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

When a Grox surrenders, the transmission reads “Grox Surrender. Does not compute.” This is a reference to robots in popular culture doing something outside of their programming, or when one actions against their will.

In “Oh, Say Can Your Say?” (A Dr. Seuss book) there is an animal called a Grox.